Last year, Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne issued a news release saying this:
Today is the beginning of the end of an unregulated legal highs industry, and young New Zealanders will be the safer for it. … This is game-changing legislation that will be in place by August, and will make the industry prove its products are safe or they will not be on the market.
He told the New Zealand Herald in 2012, “The problem in the past has been that we had a totally unregulated market with who knows what substances in these products. I am quite unapologetic about leading changes that will make things safer for young New Zealanders.” He told Radio New Zealand all international evidence showed bans don’t work and, if they did, he would have applied one three years ago.
On Sunday, Dunne announced that all the legal highs remaining on the market since the law passed would be withdrawn from sale, in the wake of “reports of severe adverse reactions continue to be received by the National Poisons Centre”. “It has been impossible to attribute these adverse effects to any particular products and in the absence of that ministers accepted my recommendation at cabinet last Tuesday to end the transitional period, taking all products with interim approval off the market,” he said.
What the issue is here is ultimately, I assume, one of public safety. I was going to move quickly and stealthily to prevent stockpiling and binge buying.
The Wireless covered the Psychoactive Substances legislation back in January, but the tl;dr version is this: The law permitted substances to be sold if it could be proven that they were a “low risk of harm”, but that posed two difficulties: firstly, what is “low risk”, and secondly, how do you prove it? Forty-one products were given interim approval as firmer regulations were developed, but that took a long time. Further complicating the situation is that proposal to test the products included testing on animal products.
What Sunday’s announcement means is that once legislation is passed under urgency next week, those 41 legal highs will effectively be banned, undoing the work of a law that has been lauded internationally, and a decade of trying to control the products. That Dunne’s announcement came less than an hour after the Labour Party released its own legal highs policy – and some weeks before it was planned – highlights that this was a political move.
Dunne denied that on Morning Report on Monday. “I think that’s silly, frankly. What the issue is here is ultimately, I assume, one of public safety. I was going to move quickly and stealthily to prevent stockpiling and binge buying. When it became clear to me that there were announcements being made by NZ First and Labour about their intentions, that was inevitably going to create a period of uncertainty. I needed to act to announce the Government’s intentions clearly.”
Ross Bell, the executive director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation, says it was clearly a “silly” political decision. “They were sick of the media coverage. It is an election year, there’s a lot of local council concern about having to set up local policies, there’s a lot of stories of harm, no one getting to the bottom of whether that was actually from the legals, or the ones they’d previously banned.
“And then ironically, a few days after that was announced the health authority deemed that there were six products that were harmful and were withdrawn from the shelves immediately. Proving what we all knew: that the law was well-designed.”
In March, Stuff.co.nz reported on protests around the substances, telling the story of Katie Bayliss, who says her 23-year-old son died from using synthetic cannabis.
The loss prompted the Tauranga mother of five to set up a Facebook page called Ban Synthetic Cannabis NZ Wide to protest against legal highs. “I am concerned primarily for the people I know. My other son's smoking it as well and I'm very, very concerned about him, that was my main motivation to do this,” Ms Bayliss said.
We asked people on the streets of downtown Wellington if they'd tried “legal highs”, and whether they thought banning them was the right move.
The New Scientist says the “radical new approach” may be stumbling at the first hurdle. “The plan is still to legalise drugs that are shown to be safe – but some are worried that the government has been spooked by a flurry of media reports about addiction and drug harm.”
Dr Leo Schep of the National Poisons Centre told Nine to Noon that there’s concern now over people suffering withdrawals and addiction issues. And he says the short time frame on the withdrawal will have an impact on addiction services.
But he welcomed the decision to withdraw the products. “We’re the first in the world to do it, we’ve got nobody to compare with, and I think, nobody, including myself, realised the impact the interim period would have.” Dr Schep says he was led to believe the regulations would be in place within a couple of months, but that was extended further and further. “The sheer impact, the sheer scale of the issues that have emerged in the past few months have surprised us.”
Ross Bell says the market for legal highs will now be driven underground. He says all the good things about the law – the principle of the law to protect the health and safety of young New Zealanders – disappears. He thinks the politicians are being quite irresponsible.
“Young New Zealanders won’t be protected from the health impacts and the criminal black market. As imperfect as the law may have been, in terms of the lack of regulations in place, it still gave the government greater control over the black market.”
The biggest risk is that is now won’t be used, that politicians are now scared off, they’re not prepared to lead and defend really good thinking that went into the law, too willing now to seek comfort in prohibition that won’t work.
In the New Zealand Herald, Brian Rudman says the politicians have been panicked by reports of the side-effects of the "low-risk" drugs. “In particular, their powerful addictive qualities. Stuff.co.nz's Andrea Vance goes so far as to call the legislation a “dog’s breakfast”.
The Prime Minister, John Key told Radio New Zealand the Government should have taken an ultra-conservative view last year and not given any legal high substances a waiver. And he said he wouldn’t feel comfortable extending animal testing for from rodents, as used at the moment, to other animals such as rabbits. Mr Key said the Government has been told that testing only on rodents may not be effective, and it may need to be done on rabbits instead. There has been widespread opposition to animal testing.
The Science Media Centre asked experts if animal testing really is required.
The Drug Foundation’s Ross Bell says the concern now is that the act will remain on the books, and no politician will sign off on regulations to “let it do its magic”. “So we’ve got a well-designed law, supported by a well-designed regulations, which finally would give government really great control over all of these chemicals that are being cooked up on a daily basis, and it will sit there on the books looking wonderful.
“The biggest risk is that is now won’t be used, that politicians are now scared off, they’re not prepared to lead and defend really good thinking that went into the law, too willing now to seek comfort in prohibition that won’t work.”
Dunne, meanwhile, has been in the Chatham Islands, a “welcome relief” to the psychoactive substances drama he has been dealing with in recent weeks. “As one of the locals said to me before I boarded the plane, “You’re lucky; we have no legal highs here, we just go for the real stuff!”
The Government will rush through the law change under urgency on 8 May.